Editor’s Note: 2009—A Year in Review

Abstract

For Family Business Review (FBR), the year 2009 was a great one. A new editorial team and advisory and review boards appeared on the journal’s masthead, and SAGE Publications took over its production, marketing, and distribution. Amid this change, FBR continued on its positive trajectory toward its mission of publishing rigorous and relevant family business research from varied perspectives while expanding its reach (Sharma, 2009, 2010). The Impact Factor from Journal Citation Reports rose more than 50% from 0.675 to 1.357, ranking FBR as 37th out of 77 business journals. Interest in FBR continues to increase. The e-alert signups went up more than 70% from 136 in January 2009 to 475 in November 2009. We received a record number of submissions this year—163. This includes 119 new submissions and 44 revisions. These numbers represent a more than 35% increase from the previous year, when we received 119 submissions (93 original and 26 revisions). Despite the increased numbers (and thus the volume of work), the overall average response time from submission to decision reduced from 50 days in 2008 to less than 40 days in 2009. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of our associate editors and reviewers, this turnaround time places FBR among the most efficient journals in management. To cope with the increased submissions and continue on our goal of providing timely and developmental reviews for all received manuscripts, regardless of the decision outcome, the size of the editorial team was increased from five to eight in 2009. In addition, 20 new review board members were added, and we also relied on the service of about 70 ad hoc reviewers. Another strategy adopted by the editorial team was to shift our emphasis a bit more to focus on the most promising manuscripts while spending the least amount of editorial and reviewer time on the least promising ones. Toward this end, we have increased the number of desk-rejected articles, which now stands at about 30% of all submissions. Manuscripts are desk rejected when they do not fit the mission of the journal or are too underdeveloped to benefit from the review process. In such cases, two members of the editorial team go through the manuscript and provide a developmental letter to author or authors to advance the article further. This helps free up the time of editors and reviewers to concentrate on the most promising manuscripts. Most articles published in FBR in 2009 went through two or three revisions. It is our hope that such efforts from the editorial team, reviewers, and authors help realize the learning potential of each article that is brought forward to our readers. FBR continues to be attractive to scholars from around the world. This global reach is evident from the sources of submissions we get. In 2009, we received manuscripts from more than 30 countries. Although the United States remained the leading source of submissions (23% of all received articles), other countries, such as Australia, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Taiwan, were significant contributors as well. The work of 68 authors was published in the year in the form of 20 articles, seven commentaries, eight book reviews, and one interview. The trend toward more empirical studies is evident, as 14 out of the 20 published articles were based on empirical research. Although 3 of the 14 empirical studies were focused on publicly held firms, the others studied privately held family enterprises. A large majority of these followed quantitative methods, and it is encouraging to note that family business scholars are beginning to exploit the learning potential of large databases. Four articles published in 2009 used existing databases—GEM (Levie & Lerner, 2009), PSID (Rodriguez, Tuggle, Hackett, 2009), NSSBF (Steijvers & Voordeckers, 2009), and S&P 500 (Short, Payne, Brigham, Lumpkin, & Broberg, 2009). At the same time, we have deliberately